From: blake-d-request@albion.com Sent: Thursday, November 28, 1996 5:18 AM To: blake-d@albion.com Subject: blake-d Digest V1996 #138 ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 138 Today's Topics: Re: J25: Spectre and Los Hello (Again) blake at Yale Re: B's female nudes & precursors in art Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply Recordings? Re: Morton, Mee, and Co. Re: Jerusalem 25 -Reply -Reply -Reply Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply -Reply Re: J25: Spectre and Los -Reply Re:Blake's spelling of receive with an ie Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply -Reply J25: Spectre and Los -Reply....primary and secondary meanings of text For Blake's Birthday Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply Re: Blake and punctuation Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply -Reply Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply -Reply Re: Bloom to Eshleman ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 11:28:02 -0500 (EST) From: Scott A Leonard To: P Van Schaik Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: J25: Spectre and Los Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Pam: a nice birthday present. I'd basically agree with you that Blake's primary purpose is to explore the path back to unity, but I'm not convinced that the creation of art in the here in now is of any lesser importance than letting go of our domineering lusts and entering into Eternity through the beauty of every sensory impression and every intellectual creation. I'd rather hang myself than intimate that Blake could or should be reduced to a 12-step program of behaviors that will Awaken the fallen Albion. "Step 1: Create a little beauty every day...." Nevertheless, it seems that the action in FZ after the cooperative work of the Spectre, Los, and Enitharmon, is the "real world" of human history. Where spectres divided from their emanations cannot resist being drawn down from Beulah and where Enitharmon in pity clothes them in space-time. So, yes, Blake is pondering how unity can be achieved. But, yes, he also is reflecting on how his occupation as poet & artist contributes to the building of Golgonooza. What did you mean about this discussion having implications for how we read? Curious about that for certain. Scott ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 11:44:31 -0500 (EST) From: WATT To: blake@albion.com Subject: Hello (Again) Message-Id: <1831441126111996/A03807/RUTH/11ABD2EC1A00*@MHS> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Fellow Blakeans: I have been removed from your (virtual) company for some weeks owing to complications with my local Urizenic machinery (otherwise known as the computer center on campus). They assure me, though with somewhat shaky voices, that all is now well and no more messages will be "bounced" by our address. To those who have added to the list in my absence, my name is James Watt and I live in Indianapolis, Indiana where I teach at Butler University. From time to time I offer classes in WB (though I cannot be said to teach him!). My especial interest is in Blake's mature prophetic works (the 4 Z's; Milton & Jerusalem) though I do, from time to time, employ the Songs and MHH as valuable introductions to his ideas. Obviously, then, I have little interest in any treatments of WB which focus on either the design or the text to the exclusion of the other. I am, technically, a Miltonist, and spend most of my disciplinary time teaching Milton and the metaphysicals --but, of course, only as necessary antecedants to our good friend, the ever-cheerful and ever singing William! Thanks go to him for every useful idea I ever have. My other interest (of no surprise to Blakeans) is Gothic Architecture, which I also teach, from time to time, on the undergraduate level. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 11:02:07 -0600 (CST) From: RPYODER@ualr.edu To: BLAKE@albion.com Subject: blake at Yale Message-Id: <961126110207.2026bf0a@ualr.edu> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT As I happen to have the info at hand, here's a start on information on Blake at Yale: The exhibit highlights the Mellon collection and will include Copy E of *Jerusalem*. It will run April 2-July 6, 1997, and be accompanied by a smaller exhibit on "Blake's Contemporaries and Followers" running April 13 through July 6, 1997. At NASSR I think Joe Viscomi said something about speaking during the show, perhaps Robert Essick as well (strictly a rumor) and no details then available on dates. For more info call(203) 432-2800 or check out their web site http://www.yale.edu/ycba -- there's not much more info at the web site, but it's a pretty cool place in other respects. It should be *lots* of fun. Paul Yoder ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 18:55:37 MET From: "D.W. DOERRBECKER" To: MLGrant@president-po.president.uiowa.edu, blake@albion.com Subject: Re: B's female nudes & precursors in art Message-Id: <15AEBBA412F@netwareserver.uni-trier.de> November 26th, 1996 Dear Mry Lynn, dear Jack, and dear *alii*: Thank you so much for your kind response and those thoughts on Blake's use of reproductive engravings after Raphael. They offer a valuable supplement to what I attempted to say in that earlier posting. > Detlef Doerrbecker's learned 16-K discussion of Blake's art > training and knowledge of prints after the Old Masters, [...] --oh no! was it *that* long? My renewed apologies to all subscribers. > Before I begin quoting JEG, I want to clarify that I (MLJ) > didn't mean to imply that there was any such thing as a nude > Madonna (other than the pop diva); I had slid into commenting > on the delicacy and grace of Raphael's treatment of the female > form in general, as opposed to the power of Michelangelo's. As > for female nudes by Raphael, I can think off the top of my > head only of Eve in the Vatican loggia frescoes -- Full tilt. Blake may well have been aware of that mural (part of the "Raphael Bible") through engravings. I'll look that up tonight in ... > a good place to look would be all those prints assembled in > Grazia Bernini Pezzini, et al, *Raphael Invenit*: Stampe da > Raffaello nella Collezioni dell' Instituto Nationale per la > Grafica (Roma: Quasar, 1984). Yes, Jack, I, too, find this an extremely useful compendium, and I think it has been put to good use in some recent studies of Blake as well. For example, this catalogue figures in the commentaries and notes on the *Early Illuminated Books* by Morris Eaves, Robert Essick, and Joseph Viscomi -- or in my own edition of the continental prophecies. The same institution has since published another, similarly useful resource for students of Blake's pictorial *invenzione*: Moltedo, Alida, ed. *La Sistina riprodotta: Gli affreschi di Michelangelo dalle stampe del cinquecento alle campagne fotografiche Anderson*, Rome, It.: Fratelli Palombi, for the Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, 1991. Again, many thanks for your patience with them 16K! --DW Doerrbecker ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 13:10:59 -0500 (EST) From: Bill Ruegg To: blake@albion.com Cc: agourlay@risd.edu Subject: Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 25 Nov 1996, P Van Schaik wrote: > As a reader, this never really bothered me, but one could do a version > which would make Blake's meaning more clear than versions which closely > adhere to the original, > Whether this would be worthwhile, I don't know ... students would find > it easier, by a trifling degree, perhaps, to gather the logic of some of > his extended conceits. > I'd like to annotate, as an explicator-cum-guide to the delights of > reading Blake, each of his poems - and edit them at the same time, so > as to make their meaning as clear as possible. This figures in my mind as a most Urizenic pursuit. Making the poems' meaning "as clear as possible" by reducing the complexity of meaning that Blake's punctuation allows seems tantamount to enforcing "single vision and Newton's sleep." Remember in The [First] Book of Urizen when Urizen explores his dens: And his world teemd vast enormities Frightning; faithless; fawning Portions of life; similitudes Of a foot, or a hand, or a head Or a heart, or an eye, they swam mischevous Dread terrors! delighting in blood (Chap. VIII: 2). I think there is a relationship (an allegory?) implicit in Urizen's dismay at the failure of his "iron laws" to reduce his world to "one law" and the reader who flees in terror from the punctuation (and other weirdnesses of the text) that swim mischevous before our eyes. (Actually I was just looking for a reason to quote this passage, which I think is really funny). Best, Bill * * * Bill Ruegg http://www.ucet.ufl.edu/~bruegg/ "The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction." --Will Blake ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 26 Nov 1996 17:00:52 -0600 (CST) From: Margaret Almon To: blake@albion.com Subject: Recordings? Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hello, I am hoping someone can help me locate some in print recordings of Blake's songs. I have a library patron who would very much like to hear Blake's songs set to music. If you have any favorites that are still available that would be great, but out of print recordings may be of interest, just harder to obtain. I appreciate the depth of the discussion on this list, and hope someone will take the time to answer a less invigorating question. . . Any suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks, Margaret Almon Reference Librarian University Of Scranton ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 12:07:06 +1100 (EST) From: jon.mee@anu.edu.au (Jon Mee) To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Morton, Mee, and Co. Message-Id: <199611270107.MAA10906@anugpo.anu.edu.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" disconnect ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 09:31:29 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, MTS231F@wpgate.smsu.edu Subject: Re: Jerusalem 25 -Reply -Reply -Reply Message-Id: Mark, Yes, I fully agree. I responded to the first message on the Spectre in general, and found your message only after replying re the specific passage... and , too, the reversal of the processes of the Fall begins with Los's reintegration - not only with his Spectre, but with his Emanation. In Kabbalah there is a similar reversal during which the scattered divine sparks are gathered up again and, in the book I recently wrote, I present Los as gathering these sparks at his Furnaces ... which is why he labours so incessantly and with such fortitude at his Furnaces. An interesting question arises from this comparison between Blake and the Kabbalah ... in the latter, Earth is created only after many fallen worlds have been created in the abyss. Similarly, in BLake, the fallen worlds created by each of the fallen Zoas is swept away... and earth is the final triumph of Los, labouring to create something more like Jerusalem used to be.... yet nevertheless in the wrold of `death' rather than life. It could, perhaps be related to the meanings of Golgonooza. The Blacksmith figure in "Tyger" can be readily identified with Los and the question arises, 'Is his creation of Earth and all its creatures equivalent to the creation of Tebel in Kabbalah?' I think it is and explore this in depth in the book as it perfectly fits with the reclaiming by Los of his Spectre and Emanation (which I explored in detail in my Ph.d.) Pam ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 09:39:32 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, saleonar@cc.ysu.edu Cc: agourlay@risd.edu Subject: Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply -Reply Message-Id: No, I don't really want an easier version since , as I indicated, I never found Blake's punctuation a problem, personally. However, I was musing aloud along the lines of :- if we were to do, for example, an annotated joint version of any poem , or extract, we could simultaneously amend punctuation to indicate meaning more clearly. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 10:00:27 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: saleonar@cc.ysu.edu Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: J25: Spectre and Los -Reply Message-Id: Scott, I suppose I do sound a little twee at times as if considering a 12 step waltz back to Eternity. I hope this reflects more the limitations of my own ability to say all I'm trying to at any given time as accurately as possible -rather, than, heaven forbid (to use a quaint old Victorianism) an aspect of my true self. I agree fully that Blake saw art (and any exercise of genius and inspiration) as being absolutely essential in building Golgonooza and restoring Jerusalem. I was merely suggesting that the particular passage under scrutiny may have that as an implied, but not primary, meaning. As to what I meant yesterday by reading texts differently... I smiled to myself when I got home and thought about that statement as I wondered exactly what I meant by it myself! I'll go back on my posting now and see if I can recall the fleeting thought that crossed my mind then....it may have had something to do with, for example, how we read poems like `The Clod & the Pebble' - first, as evocative of the real world of nature in which there are real clods and pebbles, and then on a symbolic level, and even on a Blakean mythologic or cosmological level since, once the Clod and Pebble sang in eternal streams with their divine human voices. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 10:05:19 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: jmichael@seraph1.sewanee.edu Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: Re:Blake's spelling of receive with an ie Message-Id: Jennifer, Thanks for the feedback on punctuation. I don't think, however, that we can say that Blake was guilty of mis-spelling of receive in using and ie consistently as there was no fixed spelling of some words until the Victorian age, despite Johnson's dictionary. That is, I seem to recall Jane Austen spelling neice with an ei, and some similar oddities in Clarissa. Pam ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 11:49:50 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: blake@albion.com, bruegg@ucet.ufl.edu Cc: agourlay@risd.edu Subject: Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply -Reply Message-Id: Bill, My suggestion was very qualified and tentative, and an offer to do a joint annotation - not a single person's view of any poem, or extract of a poem. What I had in mind was , for example, dealing with a few of the queries that come on-line in this mutually co-operative way. You know, put up the text.. comment on whatever aspect seems exciting to the varied group out there. The Songs would be a good place to start if one wanted to begin a planned project, but the longer works would be more fun. ..only a few stanzas at a time. But.. on the other hand, I like the spontaneity of the list as it is, too. Just musing. Must be the rainy weather.Pam ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 12:39:51 +0200 From: P Van Schaik To: saleonar@cc.ysu.edu Cc: blake@albion.com Subject: J25: Spectre and Los -Reply....primary and secondary meanings of text Message-Id: Scott, To return to the invitation to debate an issue whixh you asked to hear more about. The example I gave re `The Clod and the Pebble' is relevant in that I was wondering to what extent we do texts justice when we import meanings that are certainly implied, but not primary in any given context. I know that all readers adduce whatever for them, personally, gives meaning to a text and in acknowledging this, literary theory has moved beyond seeing that the text has any primacy at all. (I am not at all adept at lit theory ,as you may have gathered, so am trying to express my own understanding of a shift in paradigms in jargon-less language). To my mind, feminists tend to distort Blake's meaning by coming with a ready made propensity to find maltreatment of the feminine characters and I do find this a very limiting model, having seen , despite their arguments, no such thing ...( to revive an argument which seemed satisfactorily closed by perceiving masculine-feminine in terms of yin-yang, inter alia). I think I am trying to ask whether there can not still be room to consider that the text is not simply a `virtual text' in the sense of being constructed ad lib by thousands of different readers. Without trying to define over-neatly Blake's intention at any point ( since the coinage of `intentional fallacy' one dare not so presume), it does nevertheless seem to me to be possible to arrive at some coherent and unified reading of Blake, always attempting to relate the parts to the whole. I know this is not a popular (nor tenable view in post-modernist terms ... especially if spiritual readings - or any sense of closure - are in the offing) but I am old enough to insist on my right to read Blake in this way and to defy critical proscriptions. OK, I know that I'm inviting vituperation in opening this rather unfocused corner of my mind... but ... I'd like to hear what all of you, up to date with everything via bibliographies and conferences and colleagues' mutual support have to say about such issues. Are they so out of date as to be not worth discussing? Or, through open and hopefully not insulting debate, could we initiate a new transformative reading of Blake? Is this too messianic? Pam ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 09:57:13 -0500 (EST) From: bouwer To: blake@albion.com Subject: For Blake's Birthday Message-Id: <199611271457.JAA16804@host.ott.igs.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ralph Dumain posted "The Birds" a few days ago. I am posting another love poem of William Blake. The speaker in this poem is a tree and he/she is telling of his/her love to another tree. But part of this talk of love centres on references to the love of the birds that are nesting in their branches. SONG Love and harmony combine, And around our souls intwine, While thy branches mix with mine, And our roots together join. Joys upon our branches sit, Chirping loud, and singing sweet; Like gentle streams beneath our feet Innocence and virtue meet. Thou the golden fruit dost bear, I am clad in flowers fair; Thy sweet boughs perfume the air, And the turtle buildeth there. There she sits and feeds her young, Sweet I hear her mournful song; And thy lovely leaves among, There is love: I hear his tongue. There his charming nest doth lay, There he sleeps the night away; There he sports along the day, And doth among our branches play. (K 7) There is a footnote, saying about "his" in line 16: "Altered by pen from "her" in one copy." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 10:11:57 -0500 (EST) From: Alexander Gourlay To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Pam and others who commented on my proposal about texts -- I am not really proposing a new editorially punctuated text or another annotated text either, for that matter -- the Web will make it possible for us to do this sort of thing on our own very easily, and there's no intrinsic need for collective work. What I am interested in is a collective effort to redo David V. Erdman's gigantic editorial accomplishment, in which he reconstructed (for the texts called E) what he believed to be the text that Blake wrote and etched on the copper plate; he argued (persuasively, for my money) that this was the text in which Blake had the largest artistic stake, that all texts printed from that text (most of which have poorly printed punctuation) were merely accidental corruptions of that text, and that even those copies in which the punctuation has been touched up don't have the same level of authority as the copperplate text. Basically David's procedure was to assume that the printing process usually printed only part of a mark, so his text reproduces the largest clearly printed mark that he found when collating all copies. I believe that he was right that the resulting text is better, if we are to have a single standard text, than the text of any given copy. The problem I have found is that DVE was a little _too_ careful about reading these marks, given that there are so many factors that work to shrink them. As one can see in the Blake archive images, if one recognizes that the etching process tends to round off letterforms and the printing process to shrink them (I'm oversimplifying a bit), then the mark in Motto line 2 must have been a semicolon rather than a colon, since the lower mark has a vestigial tail that would have been eaten away entirely if it were merely a slight irregularity in a colon dot -- such a vestigial tail must have been a well-formed comma tail before Blake etched it. I am therefore arguing that a group of careful readers with access to one or more of the original copies of the texts should be retranscribing them all with these shrinking processes in mind, noting those marks that have been retouched and so forth, so that a new version of David's largest-mark text can be assembled. Obviously the Blake Archive's transcriptions of the texts of individual copies, which appear to be very accurate, could be part of this project, though perhaps they have no plans to note the kinds of additions, emendations, ambiguities and other complexities that would have to be taken into account as part of the editorial process. I am probably approaching 16K, so I'll shut up. Sandy Gourlay ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 13:37:45 -0500 (EST) From: Bill Ruegg To: blake@albion.com Cc: P Van Schaik Subject: Re: Blake and punctuation Message-Id: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Or my favorite example of cool Blakean punctuation from "Little Black Boy": Ill shade him from the heat till he can bear, to lean in joy upon our fathers knee. The missing apostrophes create the possibility of reading "I'll" as "ill," which is devilishly clever given the racial theme of the poem, and also suggest multiple fathers. * * * Bill Ruegg http://www.ucet.ufl.edu/~bruegg/ "The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction." --Will Blake On Tue, 26 Nov 1996, J. Michael wrote: > > Jennifer ..thanks for the explanation re editorial problems and the > >already available Stevenson edition. I find it extremely difficult to make > >any syntactical sense of the second possiblilty you offer as an example > >:`Where man is nature ... is barren'. What here is supposed to be the > >subject of `is barren' ? Nature? Some unspecified everything? Pam > > Well, it was Mark Lussier's example, but I suppose "Where man is not > nature" could, with a stretch, be a noun clause and thus the subject. The > point is that with no punctuation, the reader is likely to rush past "not" > to "nature," and the more logical reading only becomes apparent after one > reaches the end of the sentence. Blake would surely be aware of this > problem: we're not talking about a scribbled manuscript, but an engraved > plate. While I readily acknowledge that there are outright mistakes (such > as Blake's persistent tendency to misspell "receive"), I can't help > thinking some of his ambiguities must have been intentional--especially in > a work such as _MHH_, which is concerned with exploiting and inverting > dualities before it "marries" them. > > Perhaps a better example (my own) is "Little Lamb who made thee," and its > parallel line in the second stanze, "Little Lamb I'll tell thee," where the > lack of a comma, to me, emphasizes the threefold identity of lamb, child, > and creator that is so essential to the poem. It is the "Lamb who made > thee" and the lamb/child who instinctively knows its maker. Here, of > course, it's not duality but identity that emerges from what seems at first > to be ambiguity in the line. In the example from the Proverbs, it seems we > have to make a choice between the two readings, but in "The Lamb," it > doesn't matter because lamb, child, and creator are all one. > > Jennifer Michael > > > > ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 14:45:15 -0600 From: Mark Trevor Smith To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply -Reply Message-Id: I agree that Stevenson's are the best notes. When he spent a year here in Springfield, MO (he just happened to have a good friend on our faculty who had worked with him in Africa and finagled a visiting professorship), Stevenson told me that the general editors of the Longmans Annotated English poets (he didn't mention by name Bateson and Barnard) required him to regularize the Erdman text that he used. On p. xii of his preface, Stevenson writes: "the most controversial feature of the first edition turned out to be the modernization of the spelling and punctuation. This in any case is the policy of the series, not to be interrupted for any one volume, but the argument remains. Some poems, such as the lyrics, seem best when quite unpunctuated, and their simplicity harmed by the sophistication of too much punctuation." --mts >>> 11/25/96 11:42pm >>> The Longmans edition was available in the US when I bought mine some years ago-- and I also recommend it for Stevenson's generally fine notes, although I agree with Jennifer about the downside of "regularizing" Blake's punctuation. -Tom Devine ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 14:57:37 -0600 From: Mark Trevor Smith To: blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Blake Archive and e-texts -Reply -Reply Message-Id: >>> Bill Ruegg 11/26/96 12:10pm Remember in The [First] Book of Urizen when Urizen explores his dens: And his world teemd vast enormities Frightning; faithless; fawning Portions of life; similitudes Of a foot, or a hand, or a head Or a heart, or an eye, they swam mischevous Dread terrors! delighting in blood (Chap. VIII: 2). (Actually I was just looking for a reason to quote this passage, which I think is really funny). Bill Ruegg <<< >From mts: I would like to add to Ruegg's and our delight with a passage that Blake is indebted to: in Paradise Lost II, Satan's heroic journey to accomplish his task: So eagerly the fiend Ore bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flyes: At length a universal hubbub wilde Of stunning sounds and voices all confus'd Born through the hollow dark assaults his eare With loudest vehemence. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 16:27:57 -0500 From: WaHu@aol.com To: Blake@albion.com Subject: Re: Bloom to Eshleman Message-Id: <961127162756_1486331929@emout16.mail.aol.com> In a message dated 96-11-27 01:46:47 EST, you write: << I'm afraid Blake was wrong about sexuality, as Reich was wrong also -- I don't believe sexual anxiety can be overcome by orgasm anymore than creative anxiety can be overcome by writing a poem. Sexual fulfillment like good poetry seems to be more an acceptance of a personalized repression than it is an overcoming of repression. *There is no return of the repressed*. Blake's poetry was written by the Spectre of Urthona, and not by Los. Blake idealized, and beautifully deceived himself." "On Soutine we agree, and on Bud Powell you are a latecomer -- he has been what I cared for most in American music since I went into NYC to hear him in the late forties. HIs Un Poco Loco is still for me the American Sublime." >> I repost this exerpt from the Harold Bloom discussion group. It's from some letters from Bloom to Eshleman in the oily 1970's. All I will add is : You go, girl! Harold you be bad and I love your style. Hugh Walthall wahu@aol.com -------------------------------- End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #138 **************************************